CA judge requires parental notification for elementary school gender lesson

(The Center Square) - A California federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring parental notification and opt-outs for gender identity topics in an elementary school’s buddy program pairing older elementary students with younger mentees, citing concerns from the program’s controversial lesson in which fifth graders were enlisted to teach kindergarteners about gender identity. 

At issue is a specific buddy session, in which teachers selected and read the gender identity book “My Shadow Is Pink,” which the ruling says is “about a boy who liked to wear dresses and play with toys associated with girls.” The session took place at an elementary school in the Encinitas Union School District.

Typically, students select the books to be read, and parents receive weekly notices of which books would be read next.

This time, there was no such notice.

Before the buddy session, one staff member allegedly said to another, “We might just inspire some sweet things to fly toward their shadow tomorrow,” suggesting the lesson had a desired outcome, the plaintiff’s complaint said.

Teachers read the book to the fifth-grade students in preparation for the buddy program. The fifth graders were then joined by their kindergarten buddies, who were sat next to their assigned mentors. The teacher showed a read-along video of the book, in which the boy’s father “comes to accept his son’s ‘pink shadow’ not as a phase but as reflecting the boy’s ‘inner-most self.’”

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The fifth graders and kindergarteners were then instructed to participate in an “art activity,” in which teachers told the kindergarteners to “pick a color that represents you,” and then had the fifth-graders trace their respective buddies’ shadows on the ground with their choice of colored chalk.

The fifth-grader plaintiffs were “uncomfortable” in the buddy class assignment, which they felt was contrary to their personal beliefs, and “did not wish to affirm the book’s message to their buddies.” 

The fifth graders’ parents were shocked by the news, as the school had provided two weeks’ notice for the Human Growth and Development Unit on gender identity and were allowed to opt out of that program, but received no such notice or opt-out for the buddy program’s gender lesson. The school then denied the parents’ requests for notice and opt-outs for similar lessons in the future. 

The ruling noted the school’s “admission that the buddy program is a mandatory part of the Curriculum,” which “violates the First Amendment” for “compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable.” 

“The court’s decision affirms that schools have a duty to notify parents and provide opt-outs when controversial gender ideology is taught, and they cannot avoid that duty by teaching the material in a mentoring program instead of health class,” said Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law & Policy.

First Liberty Institute and the National Center for Law & Policy filed a complaint and a motion for preliminary injunction in September 2024.